kaseytraeger

OK, I'm having a bit of a problem with getting an image to load into my Movable Type blog using CSS. Here's the CSS code: >#hdr1{ background-image: url('/home/my_cpanel_username/public_html/i/reddog.gif'); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-top: 144px; width: 600px; } For some reason, the CSS code can't find the image I'm trying to use as a background when I declare the URL in this manner. It works fine when I do this: >#hdr1{ background-image: url('http://www.pudgypuppy.com/i/reddog.gif'); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-top: 144px; width: 600px; } The problem is ... I have password protected and hot-link protected the directory used to store my images so that others can't steal them. So when the blog loads, it displays a user authentication box before it will load the picture. Obviously, this is not what I want to have happen. That's why I don't want to use the line background-image: url('http://www.pudgypuppy.com/i/reddog.gif');[/code] Anyone know the proper way of giving a URL in CSS based on the root directory?

Thanks, Lisa!

Is it banned because it's such a resource hog or for some other reason (e.g., a security problem)? Not that I'm thinking of using it ... just curious.

Thanks for the comments! I appreciate the clarification of how each form of posting is both similar to and different from the other. I've seen one post on the TCH forum be deleted by a moderator for some reason (don't remember what it was for). I take it that forums also allow the web site owner to modify (e.g., delete) posts made by other people? I would be concerned that a lot of flaming commentary would be going back and forth. Not exactly the kind of stuff I'd want on my web site. If anybody's going to be making flaming comments it'll be me!

I don't use an editor specifically for Java. I use TextPad, and it's good for many programming languages.

I've never used it, but I've heard of a blogging program called Grey Matter. Anyone out there ever used it?

Leave it to Lisa to know what to do to whip MT into shape! Lisa, you better not forget all your MT wisdom now that you've switched to TextPattern...what would I do without your knowledge?

Hey everyone! I've got a subdomain on my website that houses my blog. At the time I set it up my Movable Type blog on this subdomain, I had no idea what to call my subdomain, so I set it up as blog.****. Now, I would like to rename the subdomain. Is this possible? If so, am I able to rename the subdomain without affecting the blog content? I know that I'll have to log into MT and change the following items... (1) local site path = /home/cpanel-username/public_html/blog/ (2) site url = http://www.blog.put_your_domain.com (3) local archive path = /home/cpanel-username/public_html/blog/archives (4) archive url = http://www.blog.put_your_domain.com/archives But what I'm not sure of is if I'll have to reinstall Movable Type to the new subdomain or if it will transfer to the new (or renamed) subdomain when I change the four items listed above. I checked out cPanel, but I didn't see an option for renaming a subdomain. I only saw "Setup Redirection," "Remove Redirection," and "Delete." Thanks.

Hi everyone, I've been seeing a few posts flying about lately about Invision Power Board, and it got me to thinking... What are the differences and similarities between running a forums board and a blog on your web site? Why would you choose to run a forum board instead of a blog? The reverse could also be posed ... why run a blog instead of a forum board? For those of you who are running either a blog or a forums board, how did one or the other meet your needs? What factors influenced your choice? I'm not really familiar with all the tools and programs available for use on web sites. After all, blogging's been around for quite some time, but I just decided to install it last week! (Thanks again, TCH-Lisa!) Although I'm not familiar with all these tools, I know that the many members of our extended TCH family have played around with quite a few of the programs that are out there. I'm hoping to learn by your experience. Thanks, everybody.

Nope, just add that one line of PHP code and you're set! I tried it, and it reduced my page time by 66%. Quite a difference!

Well lookie there ... it worked! Thanks, Mike! I'm so stoked! (Do people even use that word anymore, or am I dating myself?) That's just one more feature of MT that I need to become familiar with. I'm glad it was a simple change and not something major that needed to be done to the code!

Good morning and happy Friday, all! I had a strange thing happen to my blog this morning, and I can't fix it. You can see my blog at htt*://www.blog.pudgypuppy.com. The main page should have one post from me dated April 14, 2004 that says "Hello world, this is the first post to my new blog." But if you look at the blog now, you can see that it's not there! I only made two minor changes to the index.php page, and now the blog entries are invisible or non-existant! Here are the two changes I made. Change #1 -- I changed the formatting of the calendar located on the upper left side of the page. The calendar is embedded in a table, and I changed the cellspacing value from cellspacing="4" (the original, default value set by MT) to cellspacing="3". Change #2 -- I added a comment immediately above the <table> tag as an indicator to myself that I had changed the cellspacing value from the default MT value. The code change looked like this... BEFORE CHANGES: ><div align="center" class="calendar"> <table border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="0" summary="Monthly calendar with links to each day's posts"> <caption class="calendarhead"><$MTDate format="%B %Y"$></caption> AFTER CHANGES: ><div align="center" class="calendar"> <!-- Original MT value was cellspacing=4. On 04/23/04, I changed the value to cellspacing=3. --> <table border="0" cellspacing="3" cellpadding="0" summary="Monthly calendar with links to each day's posts"> <caption class="calendarhead"><$MTDate format="%B %Y"$></caption> I then "saved" this page and did a "rebuild" of all pages. When I then viewed my blog, the text entry from April 14 was non-existant. I'm thinking, "OK, fine...it didn't like something I did." So I reverted back to the original index.php, did a "save" and another "rebuild" of all pages. I cleared my browser cache, cookies, and history. When I then tried to view my blog, the April 14 text entry was still missing. I've reviewed the code, and I don't see anything odd. Does someone out there know what's going on? If this were the CSS stylesheet, I'd just download a clean copy from the movabletype.org website. However, this is an index page, and I don't think they have templates for this sort of thing. I could be wrong, so if I am, and you know of how I can at least get back to where I was before this problem appeared, I'd appreciate hearing from you. Thanks everyone P.S. -- I'm attaching a copy of the raw MT code so all you code-gurus can see it in it's MovableType format rather than the server-parsed html that's presented to your browser.

Jim, You were absolutely right. The problem wasn't with the #content <div> at all. The solution to this reaffirms my belief that tables are big headaches ... The calendar is placed inside a table. I changed the table's default cellspacing from 4 to 3, and that fixed the problem. (By the way, I wasn't quick enough to see this one by myself...I had help from a little birdie!) Either way, I'm glad I've finally got this one straightened out! Have a wonderful evening

Here is the screen shot of the correctly-laid out page, as displayed in Firefox.

Hello all you TCH peeps! For those of you who are CSS gurus, I've got a puzzling IE bug for you. Many of you will probably be familiar with the Three Pixel Text-Jog bug in Internet Explorer. If not, you can read about it here: htt*://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/threepxtest.html I've got a similar problem, but the difference is that IE is creating a seven pixel jog in one div and is making another div seven pixels wider than wanted. The page in point comes directly from my newly-created blog. You can find it at htt*://www.pudgypuppy.com/testblog.htm. I used the standard Movable Type install and am using the default CSS file that was installed when I installed MT. I've changed two basic things about the CSS file. (1) I consolidated the many different font characteristics that were originally specified for an individual element in a manner like this: >.banner{ font-size: medium; font-weight:bold; font-family: palatino, arial, sans-serif; } into the more compact form of: >.banner{ font: bold medium palatino, arial, sans-serif; } (2) I removed background colors on many of the items and changed the background colors on others. So, now that I'm done with the preliminary stuff, here are the two problems. PROBLEM #1 The calendar located in the upper left corner of the page is seven pixels wider than any of the other <div>s in that column. I've given the column a grey background and have given the calendar and each of the other <div>s a background color of pink. If you open the page htt*://www.pudgypuppy.com/testblog.htm in Internet Explorer, you can see what I'm talking about. It may not be completely apparent, so I've taken a screen shot of the page, zoomed in, and attached the resulting graphic to this message. How can I fix this problem so that the calendar is the exact same width as the rest of the <div>s? This problem only happens in IE. If I view the same page in Firefox, the calendar and all the other <div>s are the exact same width. PROBLEM #2 The container that holds all of the blog text, called #content in the stylesheet, is shifted seven pixels to the left of where it should be. Again, this problem is only present in IE. In Firefox, it lines up perfectly to the right of the grey column. I thought I could fix this using the IE Three Pixel Jog bug fix, but after reading through the solution for that problem, it doesn't appear to work for <div>s, but rather, it works on text inside a <div>. My problem is not with the text, it's with the background color and the exact position of the <div>. I want it to lay immediately to the right of the grey-colored column. For ease, I'll be attaching a picture of the correct layout, as taken from Firefox, in a post immediately following this one. So if anyone out there has seen this behavior before and can give some insight, that would be absolutely wonderful. Note that none of the <div>s on this page are floated, so I don't think the problem is with floats. Jim (btrfld), if you're out there today reading these posts, I think this one is right up your alley! Thanks, everyone! I look forward to hearing your ideas, suggestions and solutions (hopefully!)

Dave, Wow, it looks great! I agree about using a minimal amount of colors. I personally like the somewhat monochromatic feel of your web site. I'm working on doing a similar thing with my blog. But you picked a wonderful color. Browns, tans and beiges happen to be my favorite colors for web sites because their easier on the eyes and quite calming. Of course, I could be biased because my home decor revolves around monochromatic tans and beiges with accent colors through in for punch (i.e., den has navy blue, bedroom has a true, deep purple color, and the kitchen is a combo of two or three shades of blue, tan, beige and brick red). Anyway, I really do like your site. You did a wonderful, bang-up job!

I have Adobe Acrobat Professional 6 on my work computer. Like bellringr, I've converted many documents to PDF format. What I've discovered is that sometimes the PDF file takes up more space than the original document! For example, I had a MS Word document that was 33K. The equivalent PDF version was 52K! Just be careful of this when you go to convert any files to PDF, especially if you're concerned about file size.

There isn't much to add here about how it looks in various browsers since others have already reviewed that aspect. Colors look good, with one exception (and it's only my personal taste, so take it with a grain of salt). You've given the site an old-timey feel by using tans, beiges and browns. I was visually "stopped" on the Bonus Tracks page where it says "Random OTR Dispenser". The yellow in the chart was a shock to my eyes because I was used to the muted, softer colors of the overall site theme. Perhaps a muted shade of yellow would work better. Although the yellow of choice is a pastel and not really the bright, vivid yellow of a highlighter marker, it's enough of a difference from the rest of the site to be visually arresting to me. It kind of hurt my eyes a little, kind of like walking from a dim room out into the sunshine. Again, take my comments with a grain of salt. They are only my personal preference, and I'm sure others would disagree. By the way ... it's a VERY nice site.

Frank, I bought my domain name here (through the link on the TCH web site). If I remember correctly, the DNS nameservers were pre-set to NS1.totalchoicehosting.com and NS2.totalchoicehosting.com. I didn't have to do a thing. Once your account is set up, I would think you're good to go. I remember it being very easy and taking no more than a few hours for account set up and about one day for DNS propogation.

Lisa, Thanks for the info about relative paths versus absolute paths. It's definitely appreciated. And yesiree, I'm definitely aware of the whole "web standards" movement...I even purchased and read the book by J. Zeldman called Designing with Web Standards! It was definitely worth every penny, and I refer to it often, so I'm getting good mileage out of it!

Have you read the MT installation instructions offered by TCH? They're quite handy ... you can find them here: http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/help/id76.htm My web site just had MT installed last week. I've only installed MT once (with help), so I'm certainly no expert, but I can provide a few tips/pointers, if you'd like.

Well, I have an 'images" folder inside a folder called mt-static... it's path is like this... public_html/mt-static/images/ But I know that these images are what the Movable Type GUI uses, so I don't want to put any of my images here. My "mt" folder is actually inside cgi-bin, as follows: public_html/cgi-bin/mt But the files for my blog are actually stored in another directory called public_html/blog_subdomain because I set my blog up as a subdomain. Using the information you've provided, and taking into account the way my blog is structured within my web space, let me see if I understand what you're saying about how to store, save and display images. I create a new directory within /blog_subdomain/ called "images", like this ... public_html/blog_subdomain/images All well and good? If this is the case, then let's say I want to add an image to the index page of my blog, called index.php. I insert the image directly into the index.php file. So if I add the line of code ><img src="images/graphic.gif" /> to index.php, then I should be able to first save the index.php file and then rebuild it. Movable Type won't overwrite my new line of code, and it will display the image as long as I've saved the image as public_html/blog_subdomain/images/graphic.gif Is that about right? Believe it or not, I do know how to build web sites and have a very workable directory structure. But this Movable Type ... boy, I'm just a bit intimidated. Well, not just a bit, but a lot! I know that everything can be fixed, even if I screw it up. But it can be a real bother and a tedious, time-intensive task to fix some things, so I'd just rather I get it right before jumping in and perhaps making a mess of things. Thanks for your help!

Bruce and Lisa, Yep, I think that's the answer to my question. I'm going to add another subdomain to my account, but I wasn't sure where I would need to go to upload my files. I didn't know if it would make a directory, or what. So for a subdomain accessed via www.subdomain1.kaseysdomain.com, then I should upload my files to the cPanel location of public_html/subdomain1/ Easy 'nuff! Thanks!

Hi everyone If I create a subdomain, where exactly can I find files relating to that subdomain within cPanel? Obviously, for the main domain, the files are located under public_html such that if I would normally reach a page on the Internet by typing www.kaseysdomain.com/mypage.htm, then I would find it in cPanel as public_html/mypage.htm. If I were to store the same page in a subdomain, where would it show up in cPanel? As an example...where would the source files for www.sd.kaseysdomain.com/mypage.htm be stored?

Hi all, TCH-Lisa helped me install MT to my web site last week. Currently, to access the blog, you would type www.blog.kaseysdomain.com. I've been playing around with the MT GUI just trying to learn my way around the system. One of the things I found was the stylesheet editor, so I spent some time with that. OK, so I've played around with the base style sheet, but now I want to add some pictures to my blog, most notably, a photo for the "banner" and various buttons and what-nots around the page. My first question is ... where is the best place to store these images? I'm not sure if my installation differs from what most people have because I used a subdomain instead of a directory under my mail domain. Is there a standard place that MT uses for image storage? I searched through the MT user manual, but I didn't see any reference to images. However, if it's there, I wouldn't be surprised because I'm often "selectively" blind such that I can't see the very thing I'm looking for. Another question. I want to be able to add buttons and things to blog. Do I simply hard-code those right into the page itself? I guess I'm shy to do this because I know that when it comes to MT, you have to "rebuild" each page. Does the rebuild process wipe out all of your hardcoding? If so, how can you truly customize your blog in addition to stylesheets? Hmm, I think that's all the questions I can think of right now. Sorry for being a newbie pain, but honestly ... I do try to look this stuff up before I post here (cross my heart and hope to die!) Oh, one last thing...I've heard about special MT tags, and when I've viewed the source code on other people's MT blogs, I actually see them in use. But when I look at the source code for my blog, there are no special MT tags. Am I doing something wrong? Or are the special MT tags a customization tool? Thanks